The regulations are in place to protect farmers and workers, not punish them.

An unfortunate notion states “perception is reality”. Unfortunate because it opens the door on all manner of suppositions and assumptions. Such as the perception that government bureaucracies are conspiring against farm producers, trying to make life difficult or the task of producing food, fuel and fibre more onerous than it already tends to be.

In 2021, a presentation by inspectors with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) at the annual Southwest Agricultural Conference attempted to correct the mistaken belief that farmers were being unfairly targeted. The Highway Traffic Act was not a means of complicating farming activities, the inspectors stated emphatically, they were put in place to safeguard the community at large.

The loneliest number
The same assertion is true for on-farm health and safety training. Contrary to the perceptions of many, health and safety regulations are not intended to penalize a farmer; they reduce risk and seek to minimize damages at the farm level. And another perception that needs to be addressed is that a farm needs numerous employees to trigger the requirement for ensuring health and safety training.

“There’s a very common theme with a lot of new farm clients that we work with where they say, ‘That doesn’t apply to me because I’m on a farm’,” says Josh Caza, health and safety trainer with Elite Agri Solutions in Glencoe, Ontario. “It does apply to you because you have an employee. It’s awareness and getting this information out there.”

Ensuring the proper health and safety measures are in place in any business setting is a proactive step, not a punitive one. If it were the latter, Caza notes he could cite regulations and issue ultimatums, but that process might do more to encourage everything from taking short-cuts or showing outright disobedience.

“If I had grown up on a farm, I probably wouldn’t think the same way I do about safety.”

He brings two different perspectives to the health and safety program that Elite offers. Although he wasn’t raised on a farm, his grandfather was a turkey producer, yet Caza didn’t spend a lot of time on the farm. That’s in the process of changing as he’s marrying into a farm family, allowing him to work alongside his father-in-law and gain a first-hand look at what modern agriculture entails and how he can apply that knowledge to his duties with Elite.

“I helped him plant two seasons ago and with maintenance on equipment when he needs it,” he adds. “But part of this is also what an awesome industry it is to start to learn. I had no idea how much I didn’t know (about agriculture). There is so much information that goes into it.”

A nudge in the right direction
At the same time, Caza acknowledges the effect of not having a stronger connection to farming as a result of growing up on a farm. Although he graduated from the University of Guelph, it was in Sociology, and from there, he obtained a post-grad diploma in Human Resources Management from Conestoga College. That led to a job in the industrial sector, working in logistics and slowly easing into health and safety training, which he found was the more enjoyable part of his job.

“If I had grown up on a farm, I probably wouldn’t think the same way I do about a lot of the safety things I have to talk about,” says Caza. “I’m coming at safety from the perspective of working in industry beforehand and all of the things I’ve learned in the meantime. I can rationalize and connect to the fact that these things are challenging and they’re different than what people are used to, and it’s not the way things have been done.”

Working outside of agriculture also provided an invaluable perspective to health and safety training for agriculture compared to how it’s carried out in other industries. Caza states the training for farm owners, managers and employees is lessened when compared to other industries, where training and certification tend to be ongoing and firmly obeyed versus what might be encouraged in agriculture.

“It’s not there to give you a hard time, it’s there to prevent something bad from happening.”

But again, health and safety protocols are not intended to punish farmers, they’re meant to protect them.

“We have to remember these laws and regulations are written in blood,” adds Caza. “No matter how stringent or annoying the training might seem or how much it gets in the way of the efficiency of your operation, they have to make these rules so accidents don’t happen again. It’s not there to give you a hard time, it’s there to prevent something bad from happening. So much of what I’ve had to learn to do is how to shift how I’m sharing information to make it valuable.”